A new agenda for rethinking inspiration

Abstract

The “apologetical” approach, which uses the concept of inspiration to prove that Scripture comes from God, has long proved inadequate and insufficient. This article aims to demonstrate the need to assume a new paradigm to think about inspiration, namely: overcoming the discourse about the causality of Scripture – “God as the main cause” – and take the perspective of the “adequacy” of the text: How different literary and linguistic strategies express adequately theological differences in parallel texts? How does each author intend to convince and persuade the reader? How (and why) do we see ourselves in the biblical text? In other words, it is necessary that the reflection on inspiration leave the “if” and think “how” the Scripture is the Word of God, with the help of linguistics, semantics, semiology / semiotics and other sciences of literature and communication. Latin American biblical hermeneutics, with its focal point on the fundamental identity of meanings and the analogy between situations, has much to offer for the construction of this new paradigm. Several texts of Mark’s Gospel provide good case studies to demonstrate what it means to read the biblical text with a new concept of “inspiration”.